HOT UPDATE: Check Outstanding Advantages of Magento 2.1.6

Do you know that MagenTech tends to upgrade all Magento Themes to be compatible with Magento version 2.1.6? However what are advantages of this version that you can define? Are there anything really remarkable functions that hasten you to update this latest version right now?

Here are some knowledge about Magento 2.1.6 that you should know! Noticing that this version is special for the category page as well as image resizing.

Highlights

Compared with magento version 2.1.5, this new version comprises over 15 important highlights as following:

The Category Page is now working faster

Velocity of loading configurable products from the database is as 5x much as previous version.

The way of calculating price is now 3 – 5% faster

Validating stock is also faster up to 20%

Image resizing is optimized

Image resize operations performed from the command line interface now generate images of all sizes.

Image resize operations from the Admin have been fixed

Significant decrease in the number of file system operations when processing images on front-end

Caching of image metadata is up to 50% faster, depending on store size

Layered navigation now performs better

Layered navigation is now up to 3% faster resulted from the caching of attribute options

Minimized indexing operations after product import

Functional fixes and enhancements

Let’s see following to find which functions are fixed and enhanced in this release!

Catalog

The category_product_entity table will be unlocked in this version. This will limits the ability of lock-related timeouts which can occur when indexing and checkout operations run in parallel.

The storefront now displays images that Magento resizes during product save operations, rather than resizing the product on the storefront.

The \Magento\CatalogInventory\Model\Stock\Status\getStockId() method now returns the correct values.

Configurable products

The check that Magento runs to confirm a configurable product’s readiness for sale is now faster. (The isSalable method checks that a configurable product can be sold (that is, is in a saleable state)).

Magento no longer calculates configurable product special prices on the category page. Previously, Magento calculated special prices on the category page, but did not display them.

Indexers

When you enable Update on Schedule, Magento will run a selective partial re-indexing operation

Magento now runs a selective partial re-indexing operation after import if you enabled Update on Schedule. Previously, Magento ran a full reindex no matter which index mode was set.

Import

Magento now displays imported product images in this order: first, the base image, then the additional images in the order in which they were listed in the CSV file. Previously, Magento displayed images in this unexpected order: first, an additional image, then the base image, and finally, all remaining additional images.

Miscellaneous

Magento now caches attribute options for the layered navigation feature. This reduces the number of queries to the database, and consequently improves performance.

Magento now caches image metadata, which avoids the time-consuming need to read images for metadata loading.

Magento now shows a significant decrease in Redis traffic after upgrading 2.1.2 to 2.1.4.

Swatches

Magento no longer creates redundant objects when initializing a configurable product on the Category page.

You can now disable swatches for both the Catalog page and search results (quick or advanced). To disable swatches from these requests, disable Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Storefront > Show Swatches in Product List.

The logic that Magento uses to validate swatch attributes has been optimized.

Magento now caches swatch data in the block cache, which improves the responsiveness of the configurable product pages.